This is where we started.

This is where they sent us when the coasts

disappeared. When the bombs fell. When our friends died and rose as strangers,
unfamiliar and cold.
Flag Avenue, where they planted our nations colors, back when there were still
nations and their colors mattered. Gun Street, where they set up the war camps.
Planned attacks and defenses against our endless enemies, Living as often as Dead.
It didnt take much to bring down the card house of civilization. Just a few gusts
and it was done, the balance tipped, the spell broken. Good citizens realized the lines
that had shaped their lives were imaginary and easily crossed. They had wants and
needs and the power to satisfy them, so they did. The moment the lights went out,
everyone stopped pretending.
Island Avenue, where they built the courtyard for community meetings, where
they became we, or so we believed. We casts our votes and raised our leaders,
charming men and women with white teeth and silver tongues, and we shoved our
many hopes and fears into their hands, believing those hands were strong because they
had firm handshakes. They failed us, always. There was no way they could not fail us
they were human, and more importantly, so were we.
Jewel Street, where we built the schools once we finally accepted that this was
reality, that this was the world our children would inherit. We taught them how to
shoot, how to pour concrete, how to kill and how to survive, and if they made it that far,
if they mastered those skills and had time to spare, then we taught them how to read
and write, to reason and relate and understand their world. We tried hard at first,
there was much hope and faith, but it was a steep hill to climb in the rain, and many
slid to the base
We tried to make a beautiful world here. There were those who saw the end of
civilization as an opportunity to start over, to undo the errors of history to relive
mankinds awkward adolescence with all the wisdom of our modern age. But
everything was happening so fast.
Outside our walls were hordes of men and monsters eager to steal what we had,
and inside was our own mad stew, so many cultures and languages and incompatible
values packed into one tiny box. Our world was too small to share peacefully;
consensus never came, harmony was impossible. So we adjusted our goals.
Can the Dark Ages doctors be blamed for their methods? The bloodletting, the
leeches, the holes in skulls? They were feeling their way blind, grasping at mysteries in
a world without science, but the plague was upon them; they had to do something.
When our turn came, it was no different. Despite all our technology and enlightenment,
our laser scalpels and social services, it was no different. We were just as blind and just
as desperate.

The outside world had already sunk under a sea of blood, and now those waves
were lapping over our last stronghold we had to shore up the walls. We realized that
the closest wed ever get to objective truth was the belief of the majority, so we
enthroned the majority and ignored all other voices. We appointed generals and
contractors, police and engineers; we discarded every inessential ornament. We
smelted our ideals under great heat and pressure until the soft parts burned away, and
what emerged was a tempered frame rigid enough to endure the cruel world wed
created.
We knew it was all wrong. We knew we were diminishing ourselves in ways we
couldnt even name, and we wept sometimes at the memories of better days, but we no
longer saw a choice. We were doing our best to survive. The equations at the roots of
our problems were complex, and we were far too tired to solve them.

Why did we stay? What is a city and why do we keep building them? Take away
the culture, the commerce, the business and pleasure; is there anything left? Just a grid
of nameless streets filled with nameless people?
Why didnt we scatter? Head for high ground and plant our roots where the air
and water were clean? What is it we needed from each other in this sweaty crush of
bodies?
Was it just fear? We were fearful in the best of times; how could we cope with
the worst? So we found the tallest walls and poured ourselves behind them. We kept
pouring until we were the biggest and strongest, elected the greatest generals and
found the most weapons, thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate
happiness. But nothing so obvious could ever work.
What is left of us? No countries, no cultures, no wars but still no peace. Whats
at our core, then? Whats still squirming in our bones when everything else is stripped?

Something unknown to us, something weve never seen. Memory cant overtake
the present; history has its limits. Are we all just Dark Age doctors, swearing by our
leeches? We crave a greater science. We want to be proven wrong.
This is the plague. This is the curse. So potent now, so deeply rooted and
ravenous for souls, no longer content to wait for death. Now reaching out and simply
taking what it wants.